Chelsea legend Eden Hazard has named the only player that was better than him during his playing career.

In an interview with L’Equipe, Hazard said: “Lionel Messi is perhaps the only player who is better than me. I loved watching him when he was at Barcelona. I didn’t like watching him much afterwards, but he is the best in history.

“t is impossible to take the ball away from him. Cristiano Ronaldo is a bigger player than me, but in terms of pure football, I don’t think he’s better than me. Neymar, maybe.”

Asked if he would have liked to have Ronaldo’s mentality, Hazard replied: “No. It wouldn’t have been me. After training, soaking in the cold bath for an hour, no.

“Leave me alone, with my friends, we go home, play cards, have a beer. I play for two hours with my friends. Children in the garden. It was my recovery. If I had been like Cristiano, I would have been burned out.”

On reports on him being overweight during his time at Real Madrid, Hazard replied: “With Chelsea I had just finished one of the best seasons of my career. I said to myself: ‘Now that I’m at Real Madrid, this is perhaps the last vacation I’ll be able to enjoy’. And I let myself go like I let myself go every summer. Seven years in England, without a break at Christmas, giving everything, so that when I have three or four weeks of vacation “don’t bother me”: barbecues, rosé wine… all that. Then in Madrid things went wrong and that’s it.”

“I wasn’t watching what I ate but I didn’t go for a burger every day either. You can’t do that for 16 years. I didn’t think it was important. I’m a hedonist, I like to eat and drink with my friends. Dieting is bullshit, it doesn’t work. 

“If you want to play until you’re 40, then ok, but I knew I wouldn’t be like that. I always have some champagne in my fridge.”

“They say I was a lazy person. But I didn’t go 16 years without training. The little games, the little runs, I was there.

“It’s true that some mornings I arrived without sleeping well, without desire, & when it’s like that, I show it. ‘Don’t give me the ball, I won’t move within a square meter’.”

Asked if Real Madrid the right club for you, Hazard replied: “I’ve been a Zidane fan since I was a child. The Bernabéu, the white kit… it has a charm that others don’t have. Madrid is special. Beyond that, I don’t think I fit in. It’s not like me. 

“It’s a bit of a ‘swaggering’ club & I’m not like that. I also didn’t like the way we played if you compare it to other clubs. But it was my dream. I couldn’t finish my career without coming here.”